George Fitzmaurice

Head of User Interface Research

Biography

George Fitzmaurice, Ph.D. is a Director of Research and runs the User Interface Research Group for Autodesk. He has been with Autodesk (including Alias) for over 15 years conducting research in 2D and 3D UIs including: input devices, large displays, two-handed interaction, multi-touch, pen-based UIs, TrackingMenus, spatially-aware displays, 3D navigation and tangible UIs. In the HCI community he established the field of Graspable UIs which is the pre-cursor to what is known as Tangible UIs. Currently, he is leading research projects on Advanced Learning Technologies for feature-rich software applications.

Working with his colleagues he has helped to author over 60 HCI papers and over 30 patents. Notable product contributions include Maya 1.0 UI, SketchBook Pro UI design, ShowMotion™ for Showcase, the 3D Navigation tools (ViewCube™ and SteeringWheels™) and Chronicle for Autodesk products. Fitzmaurice received a B.Sc. in Mathematics with Computer Science at MIT, an M.Sc. in Computer Science at Brown University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Toronto.

Gadget

Patents

System for editing time-based temporal digital media including a pointing device toggling between temporal and translation-rotation modes
William Buxton and George Fitzmaurice
United States Patent #5790769. Issued 1998.

Temporal data control system (Mobile scrubwheel).
Bill Buxton and George Fitzmaurice
United States Patent #5973669. Issued 1999.